Thursday, February 1, 2018

LVO 2018 - The Gopnik of the West Returns

As is the
fashion these days, I’m going to do a brief writeup of my recent participation
in LVO 2018.

Once again,
the event was held at Bally’s casino, with people travelling from all around
the world. For us though, and representing with a bigger local presence, 5 of
our locals got together for a few days of hardcore gaming!

Oh and once
again, I was the only Ariadna player!

- Dawn Represents!

Morning of and I look pretty shattered, but thankfully I was waking up at home at least so I could try a bit of impromptu cosplay...

Just like
before, myself and the others managed to get a bunch of practice in, with many
games scheduled over the few weeks before. There was unfortunately a bit of a
last minute switch in the roster (which of course affected everybody equally),
but otherwise it was a standard 300 point ITS using the following missions.

Power Pack
Tic-Tac-Toe

Comms Center

Capture and
Protect

And my lists were as follows:

You’ll notice that both builds were pretty similar, as the scenario
lineup really rewards a very typical Vanilla Ariadna setup. The only real
difference is that one list had the Veteran (for Power Pack and C&P as
needed) so I had a durable data tracker, and the other had the Scout in case I
had a worry about rushing tags and wanted eMaulers for an impending Tag
(particularly for C&P). The Warcor in the first list was a useful Flash Pulse speedbump, while the 112 was for Classified coverage (seeing as hackers are blegh).

The only wrinkle in this was Soldiers of Fortune. I think like many
others, I actually opted out of this (not having many of the requisite mercs,
and not willing to buy them just to use in one event) but I did briefly
consider a build involving Lunah as my sniper and some Sforza action for
deceptive purposes. But frankly, with the scenario switchup I simply ran out of the time to test this possibility, though I don't think I missed having them, so no worries there!

- The Full Army Roster. Notice - a few models there that wouldn't make either list (to deter sneaky observants, but also to let them fixate on big scary things and not focus on what might be under each camo marker. In this sense, worked like an absolute treat!)

In hindsight, although the Scout disappointed in both games, I
honestly wouldn’t have changed much. Really in both games, every piece did what
I needed it to. What I (stupidly) forgot was my 10 commandments gaming sheet –
having left it in my bag all day. Mercifully, memory took over and there was
nothing much forgotten, but what a risk…

Also, I sadly forgot to take many pics in a couple of games (battery life wasn't helping either!) but I think I have enough for a passable writeup!

Onto the games!

Round 1 – Power Pack vs.
Vanilla Nomads

This was a surprisingly picturesque board. Normally I’m not a fan of
this terrain (the buildings you can’t actually go inside), but the little extras
and varied height certainly made for a dynamic game. My opponent was running a
fairly balanced vanilla build, with lots of Koalas (6-8, I think?) an Intruder
HMG in an advantageous board position, Jaguar for smoke, Interventor, Kriza HMG
(his data tracker and Lt) and Morans to hold the middle with remote support. I
took the Veteran list and we were away.

Really this game involved a lot of vying for the center, but Chasseurs made it
hard for him to get an edge on. Uxia and the Spetz largely emptied out the left
flank, but his Intruder and the Kriza cleaned me up on the right. Both of us
were just tearing chunks out of each other, but as my Chasseurs still handily
held the central consoles, my board control left me still feeling okay about
the damage I had taken. My one regret though was the moment when my wounded
Veteran Kazak veered a little too close to one of the many koalas, losing his
last wound and killing my data tracker. Sigh.

Towards the end. he made a very aggressive push with the Kriza and devoured
most of my backfield, hoping to get my Lt out the picture. To his surprise, my
Lt was a Foxtrot in the midfield safe from the action, so I soldiered on with
the remaining Chasseurs, took the central consoles, and moved the girl Chasseur
up to his objective (securing his HVT). His Moran survived the mine to take a
console back and go for the tie (dammit!) but then failed the 3 WIP rolls to
take the console (hooray!). Without sufficient orders, he couldn’t reach my objective and
I had killed the Kriza with a Foxtrot just before.

- The Kriza finally falls...

Win 6-1.

Sadly I missed out on an easy 8-1 victory by not simply un-camoing the Chasseur
on his objective (had the Veteran avoided the Koala or just survived, it would
have been a much safer 10-1). But still, otherwise a solid game and fairly
indicative of the Ariadna playstyle…

Round 2 – Tic-Tac-Toe vs. Hassassins

Ah the beautiful water table! Finally got a couple more pictures of
this game, so that certainly helped. We both lined up from each other and once
again I got first turn, hoping to put the pressure on early, given the
advantage of going second for last minute scoring. My opponent had a Muyib
link, Fiday, Ghazi, an Ayyar, Leila a Lasiq and Daylami at the top left, and
finally McMurough – the only merc I faced that day!

- Deployment, with most of my forces tucked out of LOS behind the buildings (bottom right) or midfield scoring positions.

My first turn and the Irmadinhos ran up, one taking my central
console in the water (why these guys lack Aquatic Terrain I’ll never know!) and
the other mainly focused on avoiding coming too far out and catching an HRL hit from the Muyib
link. I smoked up a bit further and Uxia took the bottom right console, smoking
up much of my backfield so I could reposition carefully. The damn Impersonator
revealed and took a pot-shot at her, but despite several exchanges with her assault pistols, neither
died before I ran out of orders in pool 2.

- Uxia carefully checking LOS to the impersonator (marker visible just off to the left side of the screen in the boat). No cover sadly at first, but an adjustment the next order sorted that.

In pool 1, the Antipodes used the cloud cover to bound up to the
Impersonator, hoping to box him in. I then used the Irmadinho’s chain rifle to
try and kill it, moving into melee. He swung, killed the Irmadinho, and
survived the spray (damn) but chose to stay engaged (hooray!) so I could recamo
the Antipodes and leave them to babysit all game. Finally, the Spetz picked off the Lasiq, and my Chasseur captured a the central left flag before re-camoing.

In essence, the plan here was to use my aggressive board positioning with smoke + camo to grab as many flags as possible, hoping to whittle him away enough with some gunfighting at range to force the link to come out and play.

His turn and his forces pushed up, the Ghazi catching some AROs from my Spetz
and killing one in the process. Happier still, Mcmurough also ate a pair of
rounds and that laid him out, and at this point even the Daylami had a go,
getting shot down in the process.

- McMurough dies to Spetz AROs

Understandably feeling frustrated with the fact that the Spetz were still intact and pinning him down while entirely
inaccessible from the Muyib link, he pushed those up and captured all 3 of his
objectives with the link (right), Leila (center) and Ayyar (left) respectively.
The Ayyar hid to re-holo and he passed turn.

- View on some of those long firelanes from the Spetznaz (at the bottom and another on the boat).

My turn and the Spetz emerged to finish off another Ghazi, and then I had my
right Chasseur take the central right objective. I had a few orders in pool 1,
so the Dozer grabbed my bottom left objective, and then the Scout tried to kill
Leila, failed, and died. Damn.

Still, pool 2 was much luckier, and I saw a potential opening. Uxia
(multiterrain yes!) spent a ton of orders creeping around the island to the
right, using smoke to get up to the Muyib link, and climbed up the far side.
Lined up in a nice boarding shotgun template, Uxia caught a bullet from the one
in the water, but not before fragging 3 of the Muyibs with a Crit+hit, and I think pushing him into retreat.

With the last 2 orders, my Chasseur climbed down from the island, (using the
Antipodes to try and limit his remaining LOS) and pushed his console for a
quick line of 3 objectives into his DZ (+ securing his HVT).

Win 10-0

Much better. Really only the Scout disappointed me this game, but the
prevalence of multi-terrain on my part and use of lanes to attack his pieces
while avoiding retaliation allowed me to eek out a solid win. My opponent Greg
was simply awesome to play with though, so this was definitely one of the best
games of the day J

Round 3 – Comms Center vs. NCA

Uh-oh. Well we knew it would happen eventually, and there it was –
top table vs. Barakiel (Michael) running his dreaded Neoterra. This board was a
bit… “busy” for my tastes actually, as the extreme firelanes afforded by the
towers, coupled with lots of winding staircases, arches you could see under, varied height, and littered streets meant
determining LOS was…stressful, to say the least. Lots of checking, rechecking, winding back and general messiness.

- Deployment. Here you can see the four (!) towers on his side of the board, all with amazing firelanes. Once the Fusilier Missile went down on the left, I suspected a Hexa sniper/Swiss Missile would cover the right, so either way I was pretty pinned down from the start.

Still, winning the rolloff and going first with Ariadna meant I knew I could at
least get the HVT done and dusted in short order (Uxia at least winning her
rolloff and blasting it to pieces) while mine was tucked away in a near
impossible-to-reach bunker (left in the above photo, near inaccessible from his side and guarded by a flamer grunt).

The real question at this point was how best to
proceed.

Michael is frankly an absolute machine of a player. I don’t know how many of
you have faced him, but his precision and strategy are only out-matched by his absolutely
perfect positioning, and a single mistake can be very costly. I knew that while Michael
had a large number of orders, there were only a few specialist pieces in his army, so my strategy was to use
whatever pieces I could to leverage a solid board control advantage and ideally
trim orders (killing any specialists I could if possible). That way, if his pools had taken any damage at all, lower pano wip
coupled with any board control I might be difficult to overcome in a hurry.

Sadly, from the get-go this strategy didn’t work out quite so well. One Grunt
had landed successfully, so after taking out an Auxbot (dying in the process) and freeing Uxia to go
for the target, she was sadly stunned from a lucky pathfinder and so only got
her initial shots off on the HVT, ending any further rampage possibility on those backfield remotes. Damn bit of luck there

After a lot of finangling, the right Spetz worked up to take out a Fugazi, and the
other pushed up to take out the missile. I pushed up aggressively to get inside
24”, knowing that if I could take out that crucial piece I would have a LOT
more room to move on the board (he could see almost EVERYTHING) from that
tower. Unfortunately, despite needing 15s myself and him needing 9s, the Missile
survived the roll (ducking prone). Moreover, while I was lucky in that the revealing Swiss missed his shot (needing a 9), the Spetz was stunned by another Fugazi,
ending another chance at the missile.

Worse, the missile was pinning down any hopes of retreating with the right Spetz now that he was revealed, so I knew both had decent odds of dropping in short order.

His retaliation was swift, and the CSUs moved up to gang up on the right Spetz
(again, sadly I didn’t kill one with the unopposed pistol shot). Then his
Auxilia fought the left spetz who was now caught overextended, killing him
easily (a trade I would have been willing to make to get the Missile). The
Swiss HMG, who had revealed for a potshot earlier, swept up my left Chasseur
and stayed sensibly back for he knew he was in a good place. The Auxilia and
remote held the center, pushing his console.

My turn and I knew without both heavy hitters, Uxia and a Chasseur that I was
already in trouble, and worse, I’d failed to deprive his orders much either.
Instead a new plan formed – grab objectives as much as possible, stall, and go
for retreat! The sole flag on my left from the dead chasseur was supplemented
by my Veteran grabbing my central and board center flags, then proceeding to shoot
up his Pathfinder remote (failing to kill it GAH – you’ll sense a theme here!).

Meanwhile, my chasseur on the right grabbed my right and central right flags, bringing
me up to 5. Both died in the process (the Chasseur had to stand to get there,
eating a missile, the Veteran was caught by a Hexa MSR I knew was there, but
was hoping to bait). Finally, my Foxtrot Lt pops out – splatting a CSU in her
good range and once again being eaten by a missile in the process.

With the Mul REMs dying in their attempts to block LOS and the controller dying
trying to put down smoke for that veteran (failing miserably, needing a 14
unopposed) I knew retreat was guaranteed. In hindsight, I should have
suppressed with the Veteran instead of going for my flag, knowing he’d kill it
anyway but use it as an order bump and potentially flaming one of his
specialists instead. Oh well. At least I was up 5 objectives to 1, got his HVT
with my data tracker, and was guaranteed retreat next turn.

His turn, and the mad dash begins. The Pathfinder gets his left side objective,
and then starts moving to mine. The Antipodes however, still alive (and passing
their WIP check) blocked the path though and he switched gears to the Hexa
instead. The Fusiliers moved up and tried their luck at shredding the Antipodes
to clear a path, eating a few rolls but eventually bringing one of the dogs
down. That Hexa hacker then moved up, taking my side middle flag, and claiming one of
the ones from the Chasseur on the last roll of the game. The final tally of
objectives was 4-2 in his favor, and with more specialists killed, he had a
minor win.

Loss 3-6

Wow what a bloody game! I was thoroughly outplayed on this one by a much better
player than I, so congratulations on Michael for stealing the LV crown! In
hindsight, I don’t think the plan was terrible so much as just unfortunate – if
even a handful of those attacks I’d made against the Missile Launcher,
Pathfinder, Uxia, or CSU earlier had gone through, maybe, just maybe, he would have
been too short on orders to pull off that win (came down to the last 2 rolls of
the game, after all!).

Strategically of course there were probably better moves I could
have done – suppressing with the Veteran, pushing up with a Chasseur on the
left to waste time, or crucially, leaving the Antipodes closer to the stair objectives at
the end to perhaps buy more time.

But yes, excuses excuses Lazarus - I was soundly, resoundly, thoroughly beaten
by an amazing player, and he absolutely deserves full credit for the win. And hey, now at least Michael and I are tied in W/L record haha.

Round 4 – Capture and Protect vs.
Vanilla Aleph

Well down from top table, this was mercifully a much more relaxing
game and oh my goodness what a table. The “Bill Murray” board, as it was
quickly nicknamed, was simply awesome to play on, and my opponent was again one
of the nicest people I’ve met across the table (yes, I really lucked out this
year at LVO!).

- Shots of the board and deployment

The only drawback, he explained, was that this tournament was his
first time even playing Aleph! 2 Dakini HMGs, a Deva Spitfire, 2 TR bots, and a
host of order bots meant this a very interesting force to face, a surprising
“attrition” build that could take a hit, heal back up, and keep moving….very
quickly!

Winning the roll to go first, I knew that was a crucial moment. His objective
was tucked behind a building, so Uxia thankfully grabbed the flag through
smoke, and absolutely legged it back to my lines. She made it all the way back
before sadly being caught by a TR bot on the last hurdle, disappearing into a
red mist. Still, with a bit of better smoke to obscure said bot, the Antipodes moved up to take over, I pushed up a
Chasseur on the left, and moved the Scout at the center (sadly forgetting to
grab cover with the second move) to buy some breathing room

- Scout forgetting to take cover there in the open (should have been behind the stall)

My spetz on the right meanwhile set about trying to deplete some
orders, but caught a crit from the Dakini and ate it. The Dozer (data tracker)
nabbed my flag and then hid prone all game. Finally, the left Spetz on my roof
appeared, putting a shot into his TR bot in bad range and killing it.

- Spetz on the roof picking off the TR bot at long range in hut shaped building (top right)

- Flag tucked away safely there in the bottom middle (red token)

His turn, and the bot was repaired up. At first, he tried to engage the Spetz,
but being at bad range meant needing 2s (range, cover, camo) vs. my single 9, which was just too difficult. Instead, he crept up with the other one, but again
being just short on range, the Spetz put him down. He spent orders getting
round to repair it (the Spetz killing his Yudbot), and another exchange, this
time in good range, mercifully left my Spetz alive and ducking prone for
safety. The right flank crept up, positioning the TR bots closer to me and completely controlling the board.

My turn, and after cutting off the left flank a bit with smoke, my Chasseur
upfield ran right a bit, catching the Dakini HMG, right TR bot and the
Posthuman in the flamer. The Yudbot from the engineer died, as did the bot
(yay!) but both the Posthuman and Dakini survived. Still, the 112 doc now had an
opening to get the right Spetz back, and though the Spetz couldn’t get an angle to
more than just a Probot (killing it), at least he positioned defensively a bit
with some suppressing fire.

Finally, the roof Spetz emerged, killing the Dakini
HMG, and sadly dying from the left TR bot in the process (I missed the LOS here in my exhaustion).

- This heroic machine finally dies

His turn and the creep towards my flag continued, with the left TR bot and Deva
getting close and the latter suppressing, ready to grab the flag last minute
(antipodes wasting a lot of his orders by getting in the way and eventually
dying). He had taken some damage last turn, but all it would take is a single
6-4 moving model to grab my flag and that would be it!

My final turn, and the Irmadinho moved up, beat the TR bot with smoke, and then
moved through the smoke with irregular order to template it. The Irmadinho died
and he lived! UGH! In a bit of desperation, my Foxtrot Lt stood up on the roof,
surviving the Deva suppressing (-3 range + cover) and killing the TR bot with a
-9 modifier (0 range, cover, camo, surprise shot). This left the right spetz free to break suppressing, move over, and kill the Deva before re-suppressing with the Foxtrot.

Finally, the right Chasseur moved up,
flaming the Posthuman (killing it) and dying in the process to his 2nd Dakini
HMG.

- Spetz holding my flag via Suppression

His turn and he knows it won’t take much to get the tie. The Dakini moves up,
but between the Foxtrot and the Spetz suppressing, I eventually get him before
he reaches the flag and that’s it.

Win 10-0

Very interesting game. Despite a very early lead, my opponent ground
through with a strong attrition game and had me seriously sweating by the end to
stop any one of those fast-moving models forcing an easy tie! Another bloody
game though, and not much was left standing, so good on him for really dealing
some serious damage, and better still for an army that was entirely new to him!

Conclusion

In the end (after a slight mishap with the scores) I came 5th.
I was a little sad about losing Vegas’s hold over the LVO crown for 2 years
running, but with a cool suite of prizes (a bundle of QK for the charity
project – yay!) and some wonderful games, I have no complaints. Met some
seriously wonderful people and had a fantastic time.

- Mystery box!

Quickly on the seminar – like most Ariadna players, I’m pretty excited for
Rosie, and definitely glad I held off on picking up a 2nd Blackjack
sculpt so I can grab that sweet HMG. The rest is either known for a while or
nothing for either Pano/QK worth much of a mention, so those were definitely
the highlights for me.

Of course, there was the Warcor meeting which was much more… <redacted>.

Thank you to my incredible opponents, Joel, Carlos, & any others for organizing the event + seminar, and of course my local crew for joining me in representing Vegas!

With LVO now behind me, I’ll be running QK now for most of the rest
of the competitive year, so stay tuned for some more updates folks as I begin a
new sectorial, a new paint scheme, and of course a new challenge…

Really bizarre. I've not faced a build quite like this before for Vanilla Aleph. To me, it's definitely interesting for having tons of orders, but I'd personally prefer a bit more midfield presence (e.g. twin Dasyus) and perhaps a primary punch piece (e.g. Asura). Very interesting though to see Aleph run a horde build mind.

Thanks a bunch. I can see a few switches I would make myself. I played the one I was toying with over the weekend in the new mission Unmasking and enjoyed it. I did add a bit more punch to it, but this gives me thoughts. Patroclus was a great distraction eating up their orders and a couple units, but not being key to the mission at all.